A Short Argument Against the States CP

Suppose you are a security guard working the night-shift at an art museum. Yourealize a disgruntled co-worker is wandering around, and to your dismay, punchingpainting after painting. You could run up to your co-worker and tackle them, but thatwould virtually guarantee damage to the next painting. In an ideal world, your coworker would stop their rampage on their own. But based on their aggressivedemeanor, you figure this is unlikely. So the choice is yours: tackle your co-worker(and definitely cause more harm) or do nothing at all and roll the dice with the hopethat your co-worker will abort their rampage on their own volition.It seems pretty compelling that you should take matters into your own hands. Whileitd be ideal for your co-worker to stop their rampage on their own, you have little tono confidence that they will, and so you have a moral obligation to stop therampage.Now consider the states CP. The USFG sees serious harm in the status quo. It wouldbe ideal for the 50 states to implement a handgun ban instead of the federalgovernment, but keep in mind, many of these 50 states openly oppose any guncontrol whatsoever, let alone a handgun ban. Moreover, the idea that all 50 stateswould act in unison is sheer fantasy. In sum, the ideal outcome, whereby the 50states implement a handgun ban, is virtually zero.Just as the security guard would be foolish to play the odds of not acting, the samewould be true for the federal government. In both cases, theres little to no chancethat the ideal actor would actually act. And so the obligation falls back to you, thenon-ideal actor. As the language here suggests, this logic applies to all alternateactor CPs, not just the 50 states CP.So far Ive assumed that the aff advantages outweigh the federalism disadvantage.If, in the original example, the only way to tackle your co-worker would involve bothof you crashing through a glass wall on the twentieth story of the museum, thenmaybe its not worth saving the paintings after all. But federalism disadvantagesrange from bad to awful, so this isnt a tenuous assumption. Moreover, the offensefrom the aff is likely conceded after all, being able to concede aff offense is whatmakes a 50 states CP strategic. Fully conceded offense should win every timeagainst a federalism disadvantage.Sometimes traditional debate guidelines (that we compare the aff and neg world,and that a CP is the negs world) produce outcomes that defy common sense. Whenwe feel bizarre arguments like the states CP are winning too much, we should bringthose bizarre arguments back to familiar territory, where stronger intuitions canimpart some much-needed clarity.To be clear, Im not trying to argue that we should whole-sale reject comparingworlds. That fact that perms exist suggests that even folks in the comparing worldscamp agree that not all counter-plans are legitimate reasons to negate thatcounter-plans only matter if they are opportunity costs weighty enough to make theaff policy undesirable.

In this case, the fact that the states are so unlikely to act means theres virtually noopportunity cost to affirming.